In the wake of the horrific shootings this week, Twitter and other social media have been a-flurry with defensive remarks from men (hashtag: notallmen) and responses from women (hashtag: yesallwomen). The dialogue seems to be going past each other, in a way that neither increases understanding nor gets at the heart of why these awful things are happening.

The women of this world express to men their experiences of what they go through on a day to day basis, living in rape culture.

The men of this world who are trying to understand, who want to help, who want things to change, feel helpless, depressed, and like part of the problem, and express these frustrations to women.

The women go, seriously, I just shared these horrible experiences with you and now you want me to soothe your hurt feelings? Screw off.

The women still feel unseen and unheard, and the men screw off, having nowhere to put their secondary trauma.

In the post, the author notes how men often don’t have a lot of emotionally intimate male friends, particularly if they are partnered, and that they get the majority of their emotional needs met by the women in their lives. When those women need to be listened to – witnessed, without judgment – about things that men by virtue of being men largely don’t experience, those same women cannot then be the witnesses for the pain men feel over what they’ve just been told. It’s like a therapist turning around to their client and saying, “What you just told me was deeply upsetting, and I think I need some support around how upset your experience makes me.” While the relationship is not analogous, sometimes witnessing needs to be one-sided. Which is why men need witnesses, too.

In the past little while, I’ve been tweaking and rearranging some of the content on this site, and ultimately, i hope to host my entire site here at WordPress, with the blog integrated in. For now, here are some of the new things you might take a look at!

Top Bar

I’ve revised my “Make an Appointment,” “Services,” and “About Kamela” pages somewhat. Go check them out if you want to know more about what I do, who I am, and how to get in touch with me. In time, I’ll be adding sub-pages to the Services section, to give a rounder idea of the types of help I provide.

Side Bar

I’ve added a Recommended Reading list near the top of the sidebar. Right now, this includes the 18 Principles of Rubenfeld Synergy series, the description of a typical first RSM session, and the GROUND series (Gentleness, Respect, Openness, Understanding, Noticing, and Discovery). More foundational posts will end up as pages soon, so that the foundational material is easily accessible by anyone who wants to check it out before coming to see me.

This week I dug this post by Mark Sisson, ex-marathoner and current loud advocate of what he calls a Primal lifestyle. While his dietary recommendations only somewhat work for me, I really love his attitude, writing style and sense of humor, and keep returning to his blog for inspiration.

Getting “high on life” may sound like a cliched holdover from the “Just Say No” generation, but I find it really valuable as a concept because I place a very high value on pleasure and ecstasy for optimal health and happiness. While Sisson jokes around a bit (“If that sounds like it involves a shaman, some cactus cuttings, and monotonous chanting over a fire, I don’t blame you”), I do see and respect the spiritual benefits of meditation, chanting, ecstatic dance, and even the responsible use of substances to achieve ecstatic states and commune with whatever divine you jibe with. (For some people, those in recovery from addictions, for example, substances are out of the question: I highly recommend this great series called The Dance of Pagan Recovery.)

Sisson’s post, though, is more about that deep evolutionary drive we all have to experience pleasure. Pleasure, he says,

is the carrot dangled by the body to get us to do the things we need to survive and prosper. It helps us reach important survival goals. But we’re not ascetics. Experiencing and appreciating pleasure as its own entity is necessary for true happiness and life contentment. Our genes expect us to feel good, not just do the tasks that feeling good compels us to complete.

The rest of his post tells us why things like different kinds of exercise, controlled risk, sex, nature, spicy food, music, and laughter help activate the pleasure centers in the brain. He classically does a ton of research, so there’s lots of juicy studies and links in there, too.

Even without studies, though, I recommend that this weekend, you put on some of your favorite music, have some juicy sex (solo or with a partner), and then go dance in the rain.